9 Ways to Make Your LocalSolo Profile Stand Out

One of the most difficult parts of being a freelancer is finding clients whose needs match well with your skill set. If you’re going at it alone, the journey can be discouraging and lead to a lot of dead ends.

LocalSolo exists to help freelancers connect with the right clients. After completing your profile on our website, your skill set, recommendations, and services are prominently displayed to thousands of prospective clients looking for freelancers. There’s only one catch: You must be able to capture the attention of prospective clients with your profile to win their business.

When looking for an independent contractor to work with, employers browse LocalSolo freelancer profiles. They might search for a freelancer using a specified city, category, experience level, and specific skills as search terms. Where do you appear in those search results? Thousands of freelancers have created their profiles on LocalSolo.com, so it’s important to create a profile that is unique, professional, and up-to-date.

These are our tips for making your profile stand out among the rest!

1. Fill out your profile fully. A completed profile looks more professional and gives your prospective client more to go on when selecting a freelancer. Don’t leave it partially finished – set aside some time to make sure your profile is fully filled out. And be creative!

Dave’s profile is really well done and fully filled out. You can tell he’s a consummate professional in everything he does.

2. Upload a professional profile photo. People like doing business with people they feel comfortable with and trust. It’s hard to trust or feel comfortable with someone whose profile picture is unprofessional or nonexistent, so steer clear of selfies and group photos. Stick to a professional head shot or a high-quality logo.

3. Add a few portfolio images. When an interested employer is looking at your profile, it’s wise to keep them there for as long as possible. Images are proven to increase the amount of time we spend on a given webpage. Employers and clients enjoy being able to see the work you do without having to leave the website, so upload plenty of photos to satisfy their curiosity.

4. Include the names of your past clients and agencies. Legitimize your services by providing evidence of who you’ve worked with in the past. The more clients you’ve worked with, the more a prospective employer or client trusts that you can do what you say you can do. That goes a long way!

If you’ve worked for a bunch of agencies and you haven’t listed them like this, then you’re going to miss out.

5. Add your skills. Make sure to add your relevant skills to your LocalSolo profile. Once you start typing, our auto-complete skills field will bring up all relevant skills. Select your skills carefully and accurately, as employers can use this field as a way to search for freelancers.

6. Get recommendations.

Recommendations affect your search ranking on our site, so ask past clients and employers for recommendations and references to boost your standing. The more recommendations your profile has, the more likely it is that an employer will trust your services and want to work with you.

Not only do recommendations help Employers feel confident about contacting you, they also help with your LocalSolo rankings.

7. Invite your friends. Another way to boost your profile ranking is by inviting your freelancer friends to try LocalSolo. If they are approved, it will increase your search rank in our system.

8. Make your title SEO-friendly. Put a few keywords in your title that you want Google to find. Be very careful and don’t get too enthusiastic; overloading your title with keywords will backfire and actually push your profile down in our search rankings. LocalSolo pairs your title and the name of your city to create your page title; for example, a freelancer in Miami, FL with the title ‘Graphic Designer and Art Director’ yields the page title ‘Miami Graphic Designer and Art Director.’ This page title is what search engines index, or “see,” and it will allow people to find you in a search for your main skill.

9. Spruce up your website & profiles on other sites. Our data shows us that thousands of our freelancers’ provided offsite links are being clicked on by employers each day. It’s easy to add an offsite link and forget about it, but don’t make that mistake! Dedicate some time to fixing up your existing sites and profiles to ensure you’re providing a consistent, professional tone across the board.

Your profile is the face of your brand and the ticket to getting noticed by clients on LocalSolo. Use these tips to take advantage of our search algorithms, provide a clear picture of what you do, and make your profile stand out!

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Debra is a LocalSolo freelancer and blog contributor. She writes for publications and websites like The Huffington Post, Forbes, and Salesforce. She is passionate about startups, the freelance industry, and science. She lives in Nashville, TN with her husband and daughter.
View her Huffington Post author archive here: http://huffingtonpost.com/debra-carpenter